Catfish leave the main body of water and migrate up smaller streams and creeks to spawn. Therefore anglers may have to focus their fishing efforts in tributaries in order to catch them. This is especially true of blue and channel catfish, which often gather near upstream spawning areas when the water reaches the ideal nesting temperature. Flatheads, on the other hand, are less migratory and more likely to be found in the same locales season after season.
Anglers are less likely to be stymied by flatheads that have seemingly disappeared. Because tributary mouths are staging areas for ready-to-spawn catfish, they're among the top hotspots this time of year. The best are those tributaries with a warm in-flow, such as creeks swollen by spring rains.
Catfish usually ambush prey from behind current breaks -- humps, holes or trees -- near the confluence of the tributary with the main lake or river.
Cast your rig upstream and allow it to drift past these honeyholes. Before, during and after spawning season, catfish also congregate downstream from big-river dams. Their numbers increase in these tailwaters when their upstream spawning migrations are blocked, and many cats stay in these areas for weeks to feast on the abundance of baitfish, crayfish and other foods.
Fishing in "grooves" of slower-moving water between open gates often is productive. Banks covered with riprap also are key fishing areas during spawning season. Look for them near dams, bridges and causeways where engineers place the rocks to prevent erosion. Big channel cats especially like this habitat, but blues and flatheads may gather as well if there are numerous nesting cavities available in crevices between the boulders.
The best fishing areas tend to be those where a small section of the bank has slightly different cover or structure than the rest of a long, look-alike stretch of riprap. For example, a pipe or log may attract catfish. Other times, a difference in the rocks does the trick. Watch for big boulders changing to smaller rocks or slides of rocks creating underwater points. Cast your bait to the rocks in these areas and fish it right on bottom. Concrete revetment also attracts spawning cats.
This type of structure is found on big-river navigation systems maintained by government agencies such as the U. Army Corps of Engineers. To stabilize the river banks and prevent erosion, bulldozers are used to smooth the shoreline, then the soil is covered with concrete matting, or revetment.
The revetment may be covered with riprap to further stabilize it. Many flathead cats are often caught in the Winter but very few savvy catfish anglers will target them during this time. Whether your goal is big monster trophy class cats or catching numbers of small fish winter is an excellent time for both!
Spring brings on rising water temperatures and a transitional period for fish, catfish included. This is especially true of early season fishing where catching transition catfish can be frustrating especially for inexperienced anglers. Putting some time on the water in and learning to locate and pattern seasonal transition cats will teach you that the early spring transition offers some amazing fishing. As the weather warms and water temperatures stabilize the catfishing action goes crazy.
The warm water makes the cats much more active. Late March, April, and early May are some of the best blue catfish fishing of the year for numbers of fish and also offers excellent opportunities for trophy class catfish as well.
Flathead catfish are virtually inactive during the winter and the warm spring waters put them in a feeding frenzy not only adding back the lost Winter weight but also getting ready for spawn. For more in-depth information on catching blue catfish in the Spring check out the Spring Blue Catfish Techniques ebook. Catfishing in the summer is typically very good. Channel catfish however can be caught in excellent numbers during spawning periods and offer some fast-paced action as well.
The blue catfish bite can be tough during the late summer when the water gets really warm, especially in bodies of water with a thermocline. The channel catfish bite usually stays good most of the summer and flathead action is especially good also. Post spawn blue catfishing also offers some excellent angling opportunities as well. Harvest Survey Reports. List of Active Burns.
Legislative Tracker. Fishing Reports. Accountability Initiative. Controlled Hunts. Harvest Reports. Bear Encounters. Quick Links. Purchase Licenses. Weller and Winter conducted their study in Buffalo Springs Lake, a muddy, acre impoundment near Lubbock. They captured fish by gill netting and electrofishing, then surgically inserted radio transmitters in 29 flatheads weighing from 2 to 40 pounds. For two years, the researchers doggedly tracked individual signals of all the flatheads and recorded data on location, bottom type rock, silt, or wood , depth, and water temperature.
In their report, they summarized tracking data from each major season. They defined the spring season as a time from postwinter when the lake was warming up to the spawning period.
The winter fishing season for flatheads has perplexed even the most talented anglers. That is, if it can even be considered a season. Most ardent flathead specialists take the winter off, stowing their gear and resting their forearms for warmwater battles with cranky cats. Between fall, when flathead fishing is satisfying and predictable, to midsummer, when flatheads move to well-known spawning areas, lies a mystical world where few have ventured and even fewer have prevailed.
We can now turn to science for a partial answer to the winter flathead enigma. In deep winter, flatheads lie almost dormant in their native waters from Minnesota to Alabama, and from Kentucky to Texas. Tracking studies prove that flathead movements in cold water are minimal. Blue cats turn on in winter like Las Vegas on a Saturday night, but flatheads shut down tighter than Mayberry on a Monday night.
At the southern end of the flathead's range, or where they've been introduced in the Apalachicola River, adventurous anglers can catch a few regardless of the season. Jigging soft plastics near the bottom during warm spells might produce fish in the north, too, but for most of us, winter and flatheads just don't belong in the same sentence. The study at Buffalo Springs resolved most of the winter wonder for flathead anglers.
A shallow lake in the Texas plains is completely exposed to cold Canadian fronts, and by December, flatheads in Buffalo Springs had moved to their deepest haunts of the year. They didn't select the deepest part of the lake 48 feet , though, settling instead to the bottom at a moderate depth from 22 to 28 feet deep.
An earlier study in Minnesota found that flatheads captured in winter had mud on their backs. Weller and Winter noticed that transmitter signals were weaker than usual for fish that settled to silted bottom zones in winter.
The scientists guessed that some flatheads might be burrowing into the bottom mud in winter. This makes sense for the fish, since the sediment can be five degrees warmer than the water above.
That's not to say that flathead fishing is a dead issue in early or late winter. Steve Hoffman expanded our frigid frame of reference on cold-weather flathead tactics two years ago in the January issue of Catfish In-Sider. Hoffman described the revolutionary exploits of a Wisconsin angler named John Lehto, who had refined a technique for catching big, lethargic flat cats in cold water. Of course, in Wisconsin the term cold must be treated with some degree of respect.
That makes Lehto's technique of jigging with soft plastics an almost year-round possibility for many flathead anglers. In winter at Buffalo Springs, home ranges for flatheads were definitely the smallest of the four seasons, but that doesn't mean they were hibernating like bears.
Territories averaged about two acres, and one fish moved in an area of 12 surface acres. These movements indicate activity, and any top-level predator stays active in the winter for one major reason: to eat. This means that flatheads are vulnerable to anglers almost year-round, though they certainly are toughest to catch in cold water.
As water temperatures started to warm in early spring, flathead territories at Buffalo Springs Lake expanded and activity increased as the fish moved from deeper water to moderate depths, in the range of 10 to 20 feet. As in other seasons, flatheads were most often found around cover like wood or rocks. In fact, while silt covered 80 percent of the bottom at Buffalo Springs Lake, flatheads were found there only 20 percent of the time during spring.
This contrast held for every season, and it was true day or night. For cover, they consistently selected areas with rock or timber that were less available than other habitat. Obvious from this and other studies is that fishing in open water is a serious mistake for flathead anglers. In the West Texas reservoir case, it could be said that open-water anglers have only a 20 percent chance of encountering a flathead, even if they're using the right bait and fishing at the right depth.
On the other hand, anglers who select areas with cover have an 80 percent chance of being in the right zone, which is significantly smaller than the wrong zone.
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